| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: "Nay, get up, Hortense," said the Baroness. "Such homage from my
daughter wipes out many sad memories. Come to my heart, and weep for
no sorrows but your own. It is the despair of my dear little girl,
whose joy was my only joy, that broke the solemn seal which nothing
ought to have removed from my lips. Indeed, I meant to have taken my
woes to the tomb, as a shroud the more. It was to soothe your anguish
that I spoke.--God will forgive me!
"Oh! if my life were to be your life, what would I not do? Men, the
world, Fate, Nature, God Himself, I believe, make us pay for love with
the most cruel grief. I must pay for ten years of happiness and
twenty-four years of despair, of ceaseless sorrow, of bitterness--"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: day was written for him there on which he had first become
acquainted with death, and the successive phases of the
acquaintance were marked each with a flame.
The flames were gathering thick at present, for Stransom had
entered that dark defile of our earthly descent in which some one
dies every day. It was only yesterday that Kate Creston had
flashed out her white fire; yet already there were younger stars
ablaze on the tips of the tapers. Various persons in whom his
interest had not been intense drew closer to him by entering this
company. He went over it, head by head, till he felt like the
shepherd of a huddled flock, with all a shepherd's vision of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: could not restrain an exclamation.
"Brutal business!" he muttered.
"Hoh!" exclaimed Moran, scornfully, "cutting-in is too good for
him. Sailor-folk are no friends of such carrion as that."
Other lines were baited and dropped overboard, and the hands
settled themselves to the real business of the expedition. There
was no skill in the matter. The sharks bit ravenously, and soon
swarmed about the schooner in hundreds. Hardly a half minute
passed that one of the four Chinamen that were fishing did not
signal a catch, and Charlie and Jim were kept busy with spade and
gaff. By noon the deck-tubs were full. The lines were hauled in,
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